作者：Josh Bycer

我未能成为某些游戏的粉丝的一个元素便是它们拉长了游戏内容。设计师将通过延伸现有的内容和游戏设计让玩家觉得游戏始终处于运行状态而延长游戏时间。

“真正的游戏是直到X时才开始”这一短语便能够应用与此，这也是失衡设计的一个例子。

FinalFantasy(from gamasutra)

无限延伸游戏：

随着过去10年里游戏设计越来越亲近新手们，设计师们也遭遇了一个问题：“我们将如何让新玩家去了解我们的游戏？”

并不是所有人都喜欢像《超级食肉男孩》或《黑暗之魂》这些常会出现死亡元素的游戏。如果有些人在学习阶段经常遭遇失败，他们便很有可能受挫并彻底放弃游戏。

为了回应这一问题，设计师想要通过延伸内容去确保有效地呈现出设计要点。我们可以在许多休闲益智游戏（游戏邦注：即围绕着单一的主题或包含10个左右的谜题的机制的一“套”谜题前进）中看到这点。

让我们回到“真正的游戏是直到X时才开始”这一短语；你需要意识到所谓的游戏“教程”需要花费多长时间。教程可以根据介绍所有游戏核心机制所花费的时间进行设定。

让玩家将寻找新内容当成是继续游戏的方法仍然被当成是优秀的设计。然而，游戏却不应该持续握紧玩家的手好几个小时。《最终幻想13》丧心病狂的20小时教程便是一个典型的例子。

无止境的故事：

关于游戏延伸的另一个要点便是它会提供给游戏一个循序渐进的难度曲线。有些人在一开始并不需要担心游戏是否太过复杂，游戏将逐渐提升难度去测试玩家。尽管基于这种方式去设计游戏对新手来说是有利的，但这对于资深玩家或回头客玩家来说却很折腾。

当资深玩家被迫必须先玩最简单的内容才能接触更复杂的内容时，他们便会觉得游戏变成了一份工作而不是真正的乐趣。关于这样的设计存在两个例子，第一个例子便是伴随着进程系统的RPG游戏。

在此，特定级别的角色将经历不同的难度级别。例如最初的《暗黑破坏神3》，1至30级是普通级别，31至48是噩梦级别，49至60则是地狱。这里的要点在于你不能控制一个1级角色去挑战噩梦级别的难度，因为级别的区别有可能会将它们置于死地，相反地你应该基于不同角色穿越不同的难度。

第二个例子便是在行动游戏中，最高难度的设置值会在玩家打败第二困难的设置（可能是普通的或者困难的）时才会打开。

在这些例子中，最终结果便是游戏中立了普通的难度以及所谓的“真正游戏”的难度。或者最复杂的难度失衡了，即让那些资深玩家可以不受挫地穿越游戏。

这些选择都不能有效地说服人们穿越最简单的设置。在《龙之皇冠》中，开发者设置了3个难度级别去框定敌人难度，战利品和角色级别。最普通的游戏设置非常简单，但却要求每个玩家经历20个小时的活动才能前往复杂的模式。

最终便是这些游戏拥有较长的游戏时间和较强的重玩能力，但问题在于：有多少内容属于忙碌的工作而多少内容属于真正的乐趣？

这也是我为何更喜欢只拥有1,2个难度级别的游戏，或者能够让玩家控制难度的游戏。

让事情变得更难（或更简单）：

当眼于难度级别，最简单的解决方法便是在游戏中只设定1,2个级别。将“普通”级别当成是玩游戏的主要方式，而其它级别则是那些不熟悉游戏的玩家的“简单模式”。

我发现当难度选择越少时，游戏便会越加平衡。尝试着基于True Vault Hunter（复杂模式）和Ultimate Vault Hunter（额外的复杂模式）去玩《边境之地2》，我发现敌人的属性被提高了许多，从而导致我几乎不能独自完成任何事。

说到独自和游戏平衡，让敌人扩展到具有多人游戏组件的游戏中是一个好主意。这将帮助游戏避免因为失衡的设计而出现的强制性多人游戏问题。

只是因为你坚持于一个难度级别并不意味着你不能拥有不同的难度程度。

在《超级马里奥银河1》和《超级马里奥银河2》中，设计师为玩家创造了各种挑战让他们在不同难度程度中执行它们。

可行的挑战数量意味着那些刚接触游戏的人可以从较简单的级别开始游戏；同时较有经验的玩家则可以挑战更困难的内容。

最终这两个玩家群组将到达最后的战斗，但除非有人追求100%完成任务，否则他们便不需要经历每一个关卡。一个玩家如何经历游戏对于其他玩家的经历并不会产生任何影响。

在这里更难做到的一点是让玩家能够根据自己的意愿去调整游戏难度。在其它情况中，设计师会提供给玩家一些方法去基于不同元素改变游戏难度，反过来，玩家也将会因为自己的选择获得奖励。

可定制的不利因素：

只有少数的一些游戏遵循了这一方向。面向3DS的《新光之神话:帕鲁迪那之镜》便允许玩家可以在一个级别上升或降低标准级别的难度前消费游戏货币。当玩家走向更高级别时，敌人便会更强大，但玩家也能为此找到更棒的战利品。

作为游戏延伸的一个例子，《暗黑破坏神3》最终提供了伴随着“怪物威力”设置的可定制内容。即通过从1至10提升设置，玩家可以提升所有敌人的属性值，同时伴随着级别的提升而创造出更加戏剧性的升级。当玩家提升每个级别时他们找到稀有道具的机会也会跟着提升。

当暴雪最终适应了在地狱隐藏非常稀有的战利品时，怪物威力系统便被当成是获取这些战利品的必要条件。

我最喜欢的是来自《美妙世界》的玩家定义的难度。这款游戏充满了独特的游戏系统，甚至值得我们重新写篇文章去介绍它们。

关于难度，这款游戏是基于三种方式去控制它。首先是无处不在的难度滑动器。滑动器将决定整体的敌人难度及其属性。此外，敌人所掉落的战利品也是由游戏的难度所设定的，即在更困难的设置下降会出现更棒的战利品。

其次，你可以享受最大的主角生命值，这将能够提升战利品的掉落率。基于5%至10%的战利品掉落率，这需要呈现出最棒的内容。最后，如果获得了更多钱和体验，你便能够将战斗与更多群组组合在一起，而呈现出多人游戏的状态。

《美妙世界》提供给玩家多种方式去调整难度，而最棒的一部分便是这里不存在“错误的”游戏方式。那些做得不是很好的人可以将难度设为简单，并轻松完成任务。与此同时，完美主义者也可以通过更加复杂的战斗去测试自己并从中获得奖励。

延伸内容是保持玩家专注于游戏的最常见方法，但却注重于提供数量设计而非质量设计。具有有效节奏的游戏将持续较长时间让玩家看到所有的内容，并且不会在欢迎阶段逗留太久。

当开发一款致力于吸引玩家再次回到其中的游戏，开发者的挑战就会变成尝试着去设计能够长时间吸引玩家注意并愿意反复游戏的内容。像《银河特工》，《Skyward Collapse》或《Reus》等便不是那种玩一次就需要花费好几个小时的游戏。而是具有那种能够让玩家反复体验的较短但却吸引人的游戏玩法。

我们需要记住，并不是每一款游戏都需要成为长达80个小时的冒险游戏，即使是只有2个小时的游戏，只要具有出色的设计也能够有效吸引玩家的注意。但是当玩家开始略过过场动画并忘记支线任务时，你便知道是时候该收尾了。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Problems with Padding out Game Design

by Josh Bycer

One element that I’m not a fan of when it comes to some games is the act of padding out content. Where, designers will artificially lengthen the playtime by stretching out the existing content and game design to the point where the game feels like busy work.

The phrase: “The real game doesn’t begin until X” can be applied here and is an example of imbalanced design.

Eating your Vegetables:

As game design over the last decade became more accessible to newcomers, designers faced a problem: “How do we give new players a shot at learning our games?”

Not everyone enjoys a game like Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls where death is a routine occurrence. And if someone keeps failing during the learning period, there is a good chance that they will become frustrated and give up all together.

In response, designers like to stretch content out to make sure that the point is hammered in about the design. We can see this in a lot of casual puzzle titles where a “set” of puzzles around a single theme or mechanic consists of 10 or so puzzles before moving on.

Going back to the phrase “the real game begins at X”; you need to be aware of how long what could be considered the “tutorial” aspect of your game takes. The tutorial can be defined by how long it takes for all the core mechanics of the game to be introduced.

Granted, it’s considered good design for players to still be finding new things out as they continue to play. But, the game shouldn’t be holding the player’s hands for hours on end. An infamous case in point would be Final Fantasy 13′s insane 20 hours worth of tutorials.

The Never Ending Story:

The other major point about game padding is that it helps give the game a gradual difficulty curve. Someone starting out will not have to worry about the game being difficult and the game will eventually become harder to test the player. While having games designed this way is great for newcomers, it can become torturous for expert or returning players.

When expert players are forced to play the easiest setting first before getting to the good stuff it makes the game feel more like work than actually enjoying it. There are two examples of this kind of design, the first one being RPG-based games with a progression system.

Here, the game was designed that characters of specific level ranges were meant to play through different levels. For example with Diablo 3 originally if I remember right, level 1-30 was normal, 31-48 for nightmare and 49 to 60 for hell. The point was that you couldn’t just start a level one character on nightmare difficulty as the level difference would kill them and instead you had to work your way through each difficulty per character.

The second one we see in action-based games where the highest difficulty setting is locked until the player beats the second hardest setting (either normal or hard.)

In these cases what ends up happening is that the game is neutered for normal difficulty with what is considered “the true game” unlocked for hard. Or the hardest difficulty is so imbalanced that only the hardcore who are experts at min-maxing will be able to get through it without feeling frustrated.

None of those options are great for convincing people to play through the easiest settings. In the game Dragon’s Crown, the developers had three difficulty levels that gate the enemy difficulty, loot and character levels. The normal setting of the game was pretty easy but was about a twenty hour campaign that is required for every character to get each one to hard mode.

What it comes down to is that these games boast a high amount of playtime and replayability, but the question is: how much of that is busy work and how much is actually enjoyable?

This is why I prefer games that only have one or two difficulty levels, or gives players control of the difficulty that we’ll talk about next.

Making Things Harder (or Easier) for Yourself:

Looking at difficulty levels the simplest solution would be to simply have one or two levels in a game and that’s it. With “normal” considered the main way to play the game with the other level considered the “easy mode” for people having trouble with the game.

I find that the fewer difficulty options there are, the more balanced the game is. Trying to play Borderlands 2 on True Vault Hunter (hard mode) and Ultimate Vault Hunter (extra hard mode), I found that the enemy stats were boosted so far that I could barely do anything solo.

Speaking of solo and game balance, it’s a good idea to have enemy scaling in games with multiplayer components. That will help avoid the problem of forced multiplayer due to imbalanced design.

Just because you stick with one difficulty level, doesn’t mean that you can’t have different degrees of difficulty.

In Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, the designers created a variety of challenges for the player to do in varying degrees of difficulty.

The number of challenges available meant that someone who was brand new to the game could make progress with easier levels; while more advanced players could do the harder ones.

Eventually both groups of players would reach the final fight, but unless someone was going for 100% completion, they didn’t need to do every level. And how one player goes through the game had no impact on other players’ experience.

What’s even harder to not only balance but simply pull off, would be allowing players to alter the difficulty of the game at will. In these cases, the designers give the player the means to alter how hard playing the game is based on different factors and in return, the player is rewarded more or less depending on their choice.

Customizable Handicaps:

There are only a handful of games that come to mind that have gone this route. Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS allowed players to spend in game currency before a level to raise or lower the difficulty from the standard rating. The higher the player went, the harder the enemies were but the better the loot the player could find.

Incidentally for being an example of game padding, Diablo 3 did eventually offer a form of this with the “monster power” setting. By raising the setting from 1 to 10, the player could increase the stat values of all enemies by different amounts, with raising the level on inferno causing a much more dramatic increase. Each level the player went up would in return, increase their chance to find rare items. This was recently changed with the Reaper of Souls expansion to difficulty settings as opposed to numbers.

When Blizzard finally adopted hidden super rare loot for inferno, the monster power system was used as a requirement to even have a chance at acquiring them.

My favorite use of player defined difficulty would have to be from The World Ends With You. The game was full of unique game systems which we could spend an entire post on.

For the difficulty, the game was built on three ways to control it. First was the ubiquitous difficulty slider. The slider determined the overall difficulty of the enemies and their stats. Besides that, enemy loot was determined by what difficulty the game was set at, with better loot possible for playing on the harder setting.

Second, you could love the max health of the main character which in turned increased the possible drop rate. With high end loot having by default anywhere from five to ten percent chance of dropping, this was required to get the best stuff. Lastly, to get more money and experience, you could chain fights together with the more groups fought at once, acted as a multiplier.

In those ways, The World Ends With You gave players multiple ways of adjusting the difficulty and the best part was that there was no “wrong” way of playing. Someone who wasn’t doing so well could set the difficulty to easy and make it through. While completist could test themselves with harder fights and get rewarded for it.

Padding out content is the most common way to keep players invested in a game and is about providing quantity instead of quality design. Games that are paced well, last long enough for the player to see everything and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

When developing games that are meant to be replayed, the challenge then becomes trying to design content that is engaging over the long haul as the player is going to keep repeating it. Games like Drox Operative, Skyward Collapse or Reus were not designed around a single play taking hours on end. But about short, engaging periods of gameplay that were meant to be enjoyed over and over again.

Remember, not every game has to be an epic 80 hour adventure and even a 2 hour game can be memorable if it is designed well. But when players start skipping cutscenes and forgetting about side quests, you don’t need the Oscars wrap up music to know that it’s time for the ending.(from gamasutra)